United States: Hypocrisy and Double Standards

The hypocrisy of U.S.foreign policy was highlighted earlier this week when the U.S. State Department once again placed Cuba on its unilateral and arbitrary list of “State Sponsors of International Terrorism.”

Incredible, but sadly true: Cuba, a small Caribbean nation that has suffered terrorist actions for more than half a century carried out or financed by the U.S. government, both under Republicans and Democrats, was classified once more as a terrorist state. Yet it is the United States that has caused the deaths of more than 3 thousand Cubans and injured nearly 3 thousand others, while protecting terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles, an agent of the U.S. empire who freely walks the streets of Miami, the city where a biased trial took place more than 10 years ago, in which five Cubans were condemned to very long sentences in prison.

But, what is the cause of this double standard of justice?

First, U.S.administrations try to make excuses to the world to maintain the genocidal, economic, commercial and financial blockade that has caused both material and human losses to the Cuban people for more than fifty years, and remains in effect despite the resolutions of the UN General Assembly over the past twenty years.

The U.S.cannot accept to have as a neighbor, just 90 miles from its shores, a free and sovereign country, which before 1959 was a Yankee neo-colony. Washington wants a docile regime in Havana, like those created in Cuba when the U.S.intervened in the war the Cubans fought against Spanish colonial rule.

The most despicable of imperialist actions that, in order to maintain Cuba on the notorious list has launched a new and slanderous accusation about the alleged lack of measures in the Cuban banking system to face money laundering and financial transactions linked to terrorism.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry has reported that with this fabricated story, the United States is hiding the fact that Cuba presents truthful and accurate information to the corresponding mechanisms of the United Nations on these issues and others relating to fighting terrorism. The U.S also ignores the fact that the Government of Cuba, as recently as February 2012, has renewed the proposal for a bilateral program of fighting against terrorism, to which the United States Government has not responded.

It hurts Washington to see Cuba’s clean record in the fight against terrorism, its successful results in the war on drugs, and the transparency of Cuba’s banking system.

The double standard of the U.S.government is reflected also because it is the biggest money-laundering center in the world, as well as the world’s largest consumer of drugs, and it was the lack of regulation of its financial system that triggered the global economic crisis. The Cuban Foreign Ministry also strongly rejected the use of such a sensitive issue like terrorism to attack Cuba.

The anti Cuban diplomacy of Washington is an affront to international law, a systematic exercise of cynicism and hypocrisy, of double standard and falsehood, which has no future other than failure. Cuba has earned the respect of the world’s people, who know the belly of the beast, as our National Hero José Martí once said.